CODEWITHSUNDEEP
azureazure-table-storageazure-sql-server
Manas Kumar
Manas Kumar

Reputation: 2521

Is Azure table storage data retrieval faster than Sql Azure

There is a requirement to store data (xml data) in some storage. As it is mentioned it stores large XML data, each record (row) size nearly 1MB. The doubt is which storage we are going to use to store the data means Azure Table storage (Storage Account) or Sql Azure.

So which storage will help data store and retrieval faster?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 860

Answers (1)

Leon Yue
Leon Yue

Reputation: 16401

When looking at sheer volume, Table Storage is today far more scalable than SQL Azure. Given a storage account (storage accounts hold blobs, queues and tables) is allowed to be 100TB in size, in theory your table could consume all 100TB. At first glance, a 100TB chunk of data may seem overwhelming. However, Table Storage can be partitioned. Each partition of Table Storage can be moved to a separate server by the Azure controller thereby reducing the load on any single server. As demand lessens, the partitions can be reconsolidated. Reads of Azure Table Storage are load balanced across three replicas to help performance.

Entities in Table Storage are limited to 1MB each with no more than 255 properties (3 of which are required partition key, row key, and timestamp).

Today, SQL Azure databases are limited to 1GB or 10GB. However, sometime this month (June 2010), a 50GB limit is supposed to be available. What happens if your database is larger than 10GB today (or 50GB tomorrow)? Options include repartitioning your database into multiple smaller databases or sharding (Microsoft’s generally recommended approach). Without getting into the database details of both of these database design patterns, both of these approaches are not without issue and complexity, some of which must be resolved at the application level.

It's hard to say Azure table storage data retrieval must be faster than Sql Azure. It depend on your data structure, size.

As you said, each record (row) size of your XML data nearly 1MB, if not exceed the limit 1MB, you can choose the Table Storage first.

You can reference this document to know more comparisons about Azure Table Storage and SQL Azure: Azure Table Storage vs. Windows SQL Azure

Hope this helps.

Upvotes: 1

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